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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoJ. Scott Applewhite | associated pressSen. Cory Booker, with mother Carolyn, repeats the oath of office during a ceremonial swearing-in with Vice President Joe Biden.

By Katie ZezimaAssociated Press • Monday November 11, 2013 7:14 AM

WASHINGTON — When the U.S. Senate passed a bill to ban job discrimination against gay and
transgender people, its newest member’s first impulse was to yell with joy. Then he remembered
where he was.

Instead, Cory Booker reached into his pocket for his phone.

“I got it all out via Twitter,” said Booker, who has 1.4 million followers.

Booker, the 44-year-old Democratic former mayor of Newark, N.J., came into Congress as a rare
freshman senator with celebrity status. He has been dubbed a rock-star mayor by Oprah Winfrey, been
called a hero for pulling a neighbor out of her burning home in 2012 and hobnobbed with Matt
Damon.

During his first week in Congress, Booker tried to balance immersion in his new job with already
standing out from his 99 colleagues on the staid Senate floor.

“The model I’ve encouraged him to follow is Al Franken or Hillary Clinton,” said Delaware Sen.
Chris Coons, a Democrat and a friend of Booker’s. “People who came to the Senate with big national
profiles but demonstrated a willingness to do the work, dig in, go visit every corner of their
state and really focus on home-state interests.”

Coons came into the Senate after a special election in 2010. He is helping Booker, who also won
a special election, navigate and knows what it’s like to start the job with no orientation and a
skeleton staff.

Since a swearing-in filled with media and supporters on Oct. 31, Booker has mostly stayed out of
the spotlight. He’s studying the minutiae of Senate rules and has attended multitudes of meetings.
He has worked out in the Senate gym to meet colleagues and attended a bipartisan prayer
breakfast.

Known for his soaring oratory and confidence, he is now listening and asking questions,
sometimes seeming overwhelmed or confused — and showing glimmers of his cheeky sense of humor amid
the business of the day.

In his first committee hearing on Wednesday, he joked, “I still have that new-senator smell”
after telling the leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that higher flood insurance
rates would devastate parts of New Jersey.

He went to the White House twice. He joined a group of Democratic senators on Wednesday and,
hours after being sworn in, had a private visit with the president.

He cast his first vote minutes after being sworn in and thought votes were cast by pushing a
button or pulling a lever. Instead, he learned, “You raise your hand.” On one vote, Booker missed
his name while chatting with colleagues and flagged down the Senate clerk, voting yes with a
thumbs-up.

He brought a congressional directory and watched each speaker intently, occasionally flipping
through to match a senator with a photo.

He said he plans to advocate for New Jersey residents, hoping to ensure they receive unclaimed
earned-income credits and helping victims of superstorm Sandy. He met with an ethics officer to see
how he can leverage private-public partnerships for New Jersey, as he did in Newark — most famously
with a $100 million donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to the city schools.